So many times since coming to London, Dominic has asked me to present on topics that I sometimes had no idea about. Most people would panic and postpone the meeting or find some reason to escape. I have simply never had that problem. Today, I can say proudly, I can make a 50-slide presentation on any topic in the world complete with data, research, references and famous people’s quotations—provided the subject is on English Wikipedia—in less than 3 hours. Without Wikipedia I can do it in 48 hours or less.

Let me illustrate with an example. Three weeks ago Dominic asked me for a quick verbal briefing, over lunch, on Lederman’s Australia and New Zealand operations. Unfortunately I had spent the entire morning trying to find English subtitles for Yeh Lamhe Judaai Ke, and had completely forgotten to do this. I suddenly remembered when Dominic called me up to go to the canteen. What I did after that was a masterpiece of spontaneous data collection and rapid analysis. I told Dominic to carry on because ‘I usually took the stairs down instead of the lift when I go for lunch to work up an appetite’. (Masterful.) Dominic looked impressed and said he’d meet me downstairs.

While taking the stairs I quickly flipped through the Lederman Australasia website on my mobile phone. Unfortunately the canteen is only three stories down and I just had enough time to memorize the list of branches we have in Sydney and the name of the Australian CEO.

What did I do?

I thought on my feet. Dominic picked up some salad and soup from the buffet. But I decided to stand in line to get the item that usually takes the longest time to prepare: Some nonsense fresh Japanese platter that all these foreigners seem to really like. The Japanese chef wastes fifteen minutes making each platter doing some drama with his knife and apron. And sometimes he also tries to make conversation. It is a complete waste of time.

Thankfully when I stood in line there were 12 people in front of me already. Unfortunately Lederman has a website that has been designed and developed by people like Valentina. It loads very slowly. By the time I joined Dominic at his table I was only able to read two or three headlines from the Australasia region.